Tuesday, April 05, 2011

is one of the most exciting weeks of the year work-wise. It is the week of all the iD fashion events in Dunedin .. and work is very much involved, both at a providing people and things level, and with students and former students being selected and showing their designs. Like most places ... when there is a significant event, a lot of peripheral events get scheduled around the same time ... to make the most of visiting specialists. Last night there was an opening for a colleagues masters show .. and the work was beautiful. Today there was the first two of the visiting speakers, tomorrow there is the iD show, and organizational things to do with that, so much fun it hardly seems like work except for the fact it disrupts my usual life and that of the family. Friday and Saturday is the Railway show ... proper.

And with all that going on there is still the excitement of finishing projects and having them appreciated, and of mail in the letter box .. and invites to do things knitterly around New Zealand ..... I feel like I'm in the middle of all the fun!
And so on to the knitting, the finished object this week is the Cat-Sat-on-the-Mat, all done. I finished this a few days ago, and steam blocked. The rain here has been constant and heavy so I really didn't like my chances of this drying overnight if I wet-blocked it. Since then I have been tempting Yo-yo onto it every chance I get. I have even enlisted the cubs, if I spot her Fluffery (Yo-yo) sitting somewhere I call a cub, they fetch the mat, and I lift her gently, the mat is smoothed under her and she is lowered with great style onto it. So far she has coped with this invasion of her personal space with the grace and patience of a wonderful house-moggy, that is to say she looks at us, shakes her head sadly and settles down.

I do apologize for the darkness and colour of these images, daylight saving means that the mornings are darker and there is little light for photos in the evenings ... and coordinating the daylight hours with a sleeping cat ... well sometimes this as good as it is going to get. Today we came home and found her sleeping on the mat, on the sofa where we had left it ... Awwwww .....

The double knitting still has me enthralled, but the rest of my local knit group seems to have decided double knitting is in the same category as intarsia. By that I mean they have decided there are many more fun ways to knit and they won't be doing much more of it. I suspect that my method of knitting with both yarns in the left hand lends itself much more easily to swinging the yarn into place. This is so much like colour work in that I just want to knit another round to see the pattern emerge, even more so as the stitches are so crowded on the needle it is hard to tell if I've followed the chart correctly. I'm nearly ready to transition from chocolate on pink to pink on chocolate .. and to split off the thumb stitches. Oh I tell you the excitement here is at all scales, from the detail of working a mitten to the visiting international fashion stars!

Then there is even more excitement .... in my letter box today was a card, a courier came to call but I was not home. There is a box waiting for me at the local post shop ...... filled with my prize from Daves Mechanical Pencils and Cult Pens .......
I think I should cut back on the coffee .. really I don't need any more excitement in my week at all, which is just as well as this all cuts into my knit-night time.

take care - hope your week has all that you need in it to keep it interesting
na Stella

3 comments:

I love the Yo-Yo pictures! It always entertains me greatly to see the way cats get all their bits into a neat package, wrapped up with a tail. And the new mat is quite nice - I bet it becomes her favorite napping place, especially as winter closes in.

Enjoy your exciting week! I remember looking through the web photos of last year's competition - so many wonderful entries to look at...

You must be pleased that Yo-yo obviously approves of your mat. A very exciting week, indeed, and you managed not to tell of another parcel that must have arrived. Very self-controlled! Enjoy the Show tomorrow!

Ooooh, I am watching your double knitting adventures with interest. I haven't tried that technique yet, but it's on my "to-do" list. Hope you are going to show us your parcel contents - pens and pencils are almost as exciting as knitting needles in my book!

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Me

I knit, there is more, I spin too, make books, and play with ink printing, and I work, and have a family. There are two knitting groups, one spinning group and I love process ...on Ravelry I'm Knitfrogknit. Sometimes I get to teach knitting things. Lately there has been a growing interest in in vintage fountain pens, inks, and old fashioned pencils ... truly I am a geek in these things.

On my book shelf

Fish count : 144 + 13

I'm knitting Knitting Arrows Fish blanket, my version is on show @ Ravelry, here, along with many many others.So I have 144 sewn together and 13 ready to add, making a total of .... 157 small fish.I'm using up the left over yarn sock yarn, and started this in January 2007. It is a slow-food project, aimed at a long term outcome, not a quick weekend knit.